


Will You Murder Me?

by Vincey



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: BDSM, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vincey/pseuds/Vincey
Summary: This reality has no superheroes. No gods. No aliens. Although, it has Hammer Industries and Advanced Idea Mechanics the leaders of which purposefully change both the surrounding world and each other.





	Will You Murder Me?

A scorched plain in the dead heart of Nevada. The Doomsday Clock stands still displaying one minute to midnight – and here, it’s just one minute to noon; that is, two hours and one minute precisely to the launch of a new ballistic missile. there is yet time, the most elusive resource on the planet; the world will await, the Sun will shift to thirty degrees, and the clear sky will light up with a flash, and the massive cloud will expand in the atmosphere, and the time will come to ecstatically compare expected results with actual data, noting the negligible error, and to rejoice…

In the silence of the room, the champagne cork pops, very much like a little explosion.

Killian turns around, steps away from the window, and holds out his hand to accept a sweaty glass.

‘Ain’t too early for that?’

‘I do believe in us.’

And an arrogant kiss on the neck, and an arm twining around his waist, and the real assurance in Hammer’s voice, and a sly flash in the eyes of that ever-changing color.

And behind the window, there’s heat and death, and hundreds of meters of asphalt surface, and structures shining under the sun.

Wasteland is the most grateful in the world.

July 15, 2025, 11:55 AM. A perfect day for testing the deadly beauty.

The haze makes mountains on the horizon tremble, just the way the rock fans are getting nervous in the last minutes before the concert. The entire world energy seems to be concentrated here, and heat is furious outside but Killian’s palm on Hammer’s shoulder is refreshingly cool.

He doesn’t stay for long on this place, starting a travel over the carefully tended skin, where each birthmark represents a negative image of a star. Not steel but good muscles, a sudden tattoo on the right forearm. And here and here, bruises are showing in the color of wrathful sundown.

Killian squeezes up against him, breathing out into the back of his head – open, unprotected, so welcoming to snap it – there, where a flirting spinal bone porrects.

It can’t, god damn it. And let the desire is strong as a chamsin blast. Let him want to fling himself on its disfavor and think of nothing – and yet he has to press the invisible emergency stop button. And he’s whispering the codeword to himself.

For some reason, this is chirking Hammer.

‘Wow, Chinese spell.’

‘Go to the devil.’

‘Don’t believe in him.’

‘Then get yourself ready, it’s time to make the others believe.’

This launch gonna be successful.

***

The natural injection of simple adrenaline tonifies not worse than that of synthesized nanovirus. The third sleepless day, but these days were too rich in events, too meaningful and too damn good to let them go freely.

‘Chinese spell, say you.’

Killian is biting Justin’s lip: now, it’s allowed; no public appearances are planned for the next few days, and he’ll have time to heal a small simple wound.

And the others, not so insignificant.

And Justin keeps laughing, immobilized by the professional hold. Even here, this flaunty self-assurance – a gaudy and fragile shield he’s used to hide behind. How very cute he is.

‘Don’t laugh, or you gonna forget the magic word.’

‘And you can’t wait for me to say it. Keep tryin’ for I don’t feel any pain.’

Ah, lying.

There is nothing in excess in the room, like they were staying inside a painting by some minimalist. Everything is delineated with simple lines; cold shadows are put in the corners; any items that could distract the eye are absent. Neither chains nor whips nor handcuffs – what this cheap vulgarity is all about? To let some tools do the most interesting job for himself? Why to rely on appliances when the deadliest tool never leaves you.

An evasive maneuver – Killian’s lips are touching birthmarks on Justin’ body, paying attention to each of them. The most are arrayed in chaotic order – tender points are located in different places, although here, here, and here, they are really close. Justin cambers and closes his eyes but Killian feels internal strain, a hidden spring, a mechanism placed on alert. Pain impulses will soon run down the fibers. How gorgeous it would look on a hologram: sudden flares, small lightning charges, light vortexing in the cerebral universe. He will connect it next time. Twilight is dying into dark; the color of Justin’s eyes changes from artlessly green to inscrutably dark. A crimson dash is looming black on the cheekbone. It’s too dark.

And Killian craves to look into this face intently, to catch every change, every flinch of eyelashes, to notice a new wrinkle cut through the forehead from unexpected pain. He draws his arm aside and feels how inner flame, unseen for the first moments, arises on the fingertips with Damned Elm’s fire. A new focus appears in the palm center, and soon, melted lava flows already run down his veins.

The glow of primal orange fire deflects from grey walls.

Killian raises his hand over Justin’s face.

‘Oh shit…’

It’s no laughing matter already. He’s he[less to force his eyes away from the menacing palm.

‘You’re not going to…’

‘Possibly.’

Several moments stretch out into eternity as if they were drifting by the event horizon… and time regains its pace, and accelerates, and Justin’s fear becomes a lever triggering other mechanisms in the strained body.

Glow in Killian’s hand abates, and darkness breaks into the room again – so let it; he closes his eyes and lashes out at Justin, attacking him from the inside and outside, bursting into his body, reveling in the beastly delight, primal instinct of conquest. And almost laughs when hearing chokingly tacky ‘woooow’, and travels down Justin’s ribs with his fingers, as if trying a new musical instrument, and Justin fails to realize these fingers’ dangerous vicinity to tender points, although he knows their arrangement perfectly – Killian taught, and Justin dug in the new knowledge with the racy avarice of a dealmaker.

He’s enjoying bliss at the edge of rapture when the outrageously acute pain pierces his body. And he screams – instinctively, out of suddenness, and then starts realizing that this pulse wasn’t single, and pain doesn’t go away it only increases instead; and he’s screaming himself into fits, and this scream already carries the damnation-plead.

Killian tenderly touches the bloody dash on Justin’s cheekbone his lips.

‘Warned you, don’t laugh, or you gonna forget.’

Justin holds for a minute or two and gives up finally, and vocalizes the damned word – rather, spits it into Killian’s face. And Killian looks at him leniently, as on a careless student.

‘Wrong.’

‘What?’ gasps Justin.

‘Your pronunciation isn’t worth a damn.’

‘Fucking Chinese! Ouch…’

Killian laughs and presses another tender point. Justin yells, and then tries to say the spell again. Killian shakes head. He feels that Justin hurries, knows that he’s able to endure a bit more. He feel the other man’s body as well as his own, as if he was synchronized with him, as if he was reading his biological indicators with the precision up to the third digit after the point. Justin is cursing – desperately and artlessly, as a teen from a rich family walking into the deprived area for the first time. And when the virtual Doomsday Clock displays one second to midnight, he finally voices the secret word in the right way, and Killian lets him go in a flash, rolls down from the trembling body, and buries his face into the torn sheets.

Digital clock on the table display quarter past one, half past one, one forty-two. He is getting up at seven, it’s just enough time.

Justin nudges him in the side softly.

‘M-m?’

‘Well, not that I’m too tired…’

Lying shamelessly and godlessly – that’s a given, for god, if he exists, has left them ages ago.

***

Hammer isn’t just well-versed in weapons; he also shoots as an expert sharpshooter. For some reason, not everyone is willing to buy that but targets hit with pinpoint precision speak for themselves.

What about martial arts, he hasn’t been strong in them… until recently. Curious that he didn’t try them before, for he’s so quick on the draw, and this lightness, flexibility, grace of an awesome dancer just come in hand.

It was an excellent workout.

‘Body is the temple of the soul, right?’ 

He smiles, wiping his face with a towel and putting the glasses on. Why won’t he make the vision correction, the deuce knows.

‘The temple?’ responds Killian. (Ironically, his threateningly beautiful last name is translated exactly this way). – If we are drawing such parallels, I’d sooner call it a gym. So what, ready to jump from a skyscraper?

Hammer smiles craftily, winks – either plays to the gallery by inertia, or it’s just his irreformable character.

‘You bet.’

***

From the height of almost four hundred meters, the view is breathtaking: mountains, ocean, and desert – all in one. One can even distinguish the border with the country rivals of which are equipped with their weapon now.

‘How’s things?’ Killian, smiling, looks Hammer who’s standing at the edge of the site. Justin is re-checking the fix.

‘Plain scary!’

Killian pushes him into back – very lightly.

‘Need a hand?’

‘No way.’

Justin turns to the instructor and lifts his thumb. The guy responds with a mirrored gesture. And Hammer makes a step into the sunny void.

Killian is looking at a small light spot from the height. If he could teleport himself and catch Justin over there just in a few seconds. Alas, teleportation studies are now being conducted by too doubtful companies.

Killian’s iPhone displays the message ‘Stay there!!’ In a few minutes, Justin runs up the site again.

‘I want more!’ 

Killian could scarcely imagine that this boyish enthusiasm is so contagious. He grabs Justin’s T-shirt, pulls the man closer and kisses him – shortly but firmly.

One of instructors snorts under breath. Killian signs and turns to him. Approaches without haste, noting anxiety and confusion on Justin’s face out of the corner of his eye. And sees the smallest details of a picture formed in that head: a glowing hand, a fast grasp, a man hanging over the abyss… Justin, Justin. Stop watching superhero movies.

Killian doesn’t say a word, and the guy begs pardon, calmly and sincerely. Killian nods to him shortly,

‘Fasten it.’

And returns the wink to Justin, and Justin is squinting and smiling, and the sun illumines his eyes to transparent green, and their depth conceals something crafty, either a lizard or a young snake.

***  
Late October, dark spring evening in this hemisphere. Killian turns away from the flickering window and comes to the coach at the far side of the room.

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a hang but a whimper”, looking over Justin’s shoulder, Killian voices the final phrase of the poem. Justin smirks and slowly closes the rare edition of T. S. Eliot’s poems, obtained at the auction sale on antiquarian books not without strife. 

‘A pretty infamous death, ain’t it?’, he throws back his head, and Killian shortly kisses the floutingly tempting lip line. His hands lay on Justin’s shoulders and press – not strongly now, and the temperature on fingertips raises, maybe for the tenth of degree. 

‘You know well that ‘I hold with those who favor fire”.

‘Yeah, wrote a guy called Frost.’

This time, Killian kisses smoothly, without haste, as if such action could stop the course of minutes. A gadget like this, a light compact time machine, would come in hand to him now. His hand would whisk into the pocket and press the button unnoticeably. And the entire world would stand still, waiting for Killian to stand up, approach the tall window again, throw a glance over the static moon glade. Turn his back to the heartless ocean, go around Justin – one time, two… Kneel down and take possession of his hands, and squeeze…

‘Ouch.’

Killian loosens the grasp just a bit but it’s still strong, maybe even painful. Justin will endure. 

Justin bows his head on the side, like a curious bird that has just happened to meet a snake.

‘You’re right, the Universe doesn’t deserve such an infamous end. To collapse, to vanish, to go into darkness… This is an illogical scenario. Death is always aligned with birth. Everything started with the Big Bang, and gonna end in a similar way.’

‘Well, theories are not a strong point of mine…’

A promise of nervous short laughter freezes in corners of Justin’s mouth. Does he feel the air around them becoming thicker, the invisible charges piercing the space? Something inevitable has to happen right now. For a few seconds more, Killian is looking into the warm darkness of narrowed eyes opposite to him. And the time he wanted to stop is now accelerating, gaining momentum, and Killian just lets out a reef, and speaks of the thing he has been speculating so often, but never revealed to anyone.

‘Hell with theories, let’s take human life. You remember the preliminary estimates obtained by us last month: one hundred and seventy-six years. I am sure that even this number ain’t a threshold, we can do more, and we will get it, will use all the latent reserves, pull them onto the surface, and let them work for our benefit. It’s impossible to invent a perpetuum mobile, and immortality is inaccessible per se but living a couple of ages beyond the measured term is a feasible task. But I don’t want to become worthless in my seventies and to exist as a senile man for the remainder of my so-called life. What’s the value of immortality if it is accompanied by feebleness? Impossibility to take from life things it could offer? Inability to dispose of my own body? Tell me is such quasi-immortality worth anything?’

‘I wouldn't give a pinch of snuff.’

‘Indeed. So answer me now. Will you murder me?’

A short battle of looks, in which Justin, certainly, yields, and starts twinkling frequently, blankly.

‘Wha’?’

‘If something happens to me. If an illness lays me low. If I receive injuries compatible not with life but with existence. Will you do this?’

‘Will I…’

Just a bit – and something gonna crack in Justin’s hands; just a little – and his skin gonna hiss. No. Slow down. Just one question. For those who didn’ get it or refuses to understand – just repeat.

‘Will you murder me?’

‘Well… emmm… shit, Aldrich, I even…’

Ah, damn this Justin’s habit to laugh foolishly when he’s confused. Transition to official names. Panicking sparks in the eyes – are they brown in this time of day? – who cares.

Killian sighs silently. And finally lets the other man’s hands go. Takes off his knees and absently tousles Justin’s hair – so coarse and thick.

‘Forget it. Gonna sleep now. You?’

‘Soon. I’ll read for a while, okay?’

Be my fucking guest – why to ask at all?

Killian touches his lips in an absent kiss. Flesh to flesh, warmth to warmth. But all he feels is a thin, perhaps, one atom thick, barrier, and chill is creeping from it like from a massive ice wall erected between two hostile worlds.

He can’t sleep. The moon glade shivers and splits up, and silence doesn’t dope, just exists in the same dimension. In about one hour and a half later, Justin crawls into the bed quietly, embraces Killian’s shoulder and falls asleep almost in a blink.

What a child.

Killian pulls Justin’s hand to himself and kisses two deformed fingers.

Not today, so be it.

***

A.I.M. has hundreds of kamikazes in its staff. Killian doesn’t repeat errors made by himself or by Hammer, so each applicant is subject to thorough check, passes numerous tests prior to be accepted on the board of a powerful corporation. Even if the responsible job will mean dying in the lab walls. Or blowing up in one of the hot spots. Or, at the subject’s own risk, getting into the armor prototype – Stark’s legacy, sit illi terra levis.

In cozy HR department offices, they look at pictures of their families and friends, ensure that addresses are correct, listen without interrupting, and provide their fingerprints and retina images without any questions. Good job.

Killian could ask anyone about that. Even, for a lark (although, in effect, this is no laughing; he ain’t Hammer, for God’s sake), to include this question into a standard questionnaire. ‘Are you ready to kill your boss if required?’ And everyone would answer without thinking. And would do it without batting an eye.

Issues like this are to be discussed with attorneys. Official agreements are to be executed. Come to think of it: euthanasia is nowadays allowed in thirty-four states of the US and on the entire territory of his native country.

One can say goodbye to life in an elegant manner.

Entrusting such a job to a responsible employee would be a reasonable and reliable step. Intelligence is Killian’s uppermost weapon and the main tool. So why on earth he casts off this matchless tools, sweeps away a true and simple solution and continues interrogating the one and only person?

For it’s boring otherwise?

The moon is already on the wane, but it still illluminates every wrinkle on Justin’s face – those lines aren’t even age-related, Justin is just that Californian child brought up under the triumphantly scorching sun, and he’s used to squinting, as well as to skating around the rink and lying his butt off, smiling actorly – and yet so charmingly that the heart starts beating in a panic attack, raising a wish to lure it into restraining bandages – to prevent from bleeding in vain.

It’s hoopla behind the glass partition; engineers are embracing each other, laughing and jumping as happy football fans. The multiple launch rocket system has been tested successfully. One storey higher, Killian and Hammer shake the project directors’ hands. Then, each other’s hands. It is truly said that the handshake can tell much about the man. Hammer’s one is firm and fast, Killian’s…

…+40оС and increasing…

…grasping and menacing.

In full view if employees, in front of camera lenses, on the air, Killian is leaning to Justin’s ear and asking,

‘Will you murder me?’

Justin laughs with the winner’s laughter, releases his hand and taps Killian on the shoulder:

‘Hell yeah!’

What a beautiful lies it is.

***

The same question, the same intonation. And numerous replies, terse and voluminous, eloquent and impatient, ingratiating and almost sincere. Familiar flickering sparks in the eyes stylishly shaded with chameleon glasses. That’s right; that is it, a reptile that shares this mutable essence with Hammer.

And Killian is the incarnation of contradictions. He treats human body with unprecedented possibilities and simultaneously develops weapons of mass annihilation.

‘You are Shiva, the destroyer of worlds’, Justin whispers into his ear for whatever reason, although it is a peaceful evening just today, and it’s only a firework exploding in front of their eyes; however, this firework is magnificent, in fairness.

Killian smiles wearily. Now, it’s one of those rare moments when he wants to abstract away from thoughts about work. Just for a second – to forget about the world, to bury his face this hair of such peaceful sunny-sandy color, and think of nothing.

No fucking chance.

‘And you?’ 

‘What me?’

‘Will you murder me?’

Justin looks at him – seriously, without blinking. The last missile explodes in February sky; people scream and laugh on the street but all this happens far below them, like on another planet.

‘I will.’

Crisply, steadily. And bright, wide open hazel eyes. That is neither a snake nor a lizard. And least of all, not a chameleon.

These eyes belong to a dragon.

‘So will I.’

And let the clock on the opposite skyscraper display two minutes after midnight – Killian’s sun has just reached its zenith.


End file.
